It’s the constant lying that gets in the way

Donald Trump has done what I once thought was the seemingly impossible. He has turned me into a hard-core cynic. How? It’s the lying, man! It is constant. It is gratuitous. It is never-ending.

I cannot believe a single pronouncement that comes from the mouth of the president of the United States of America. I am not proud of this revelation. You see, I’ve resisted the label of cynic. I have batted it away. Even as I worked in daily journalism for all those years I usually sought to believe the best in people, who generally had to do something that would destroy by faith in their basic goodness.

Then along came Donald Trump from the world of reality TV celebrityhood, real estate dealmaking and a glitzy lifestyle about which he was so very proud to boast.

Trump lied when he proclaimed himself to be a self-made zillionaire. It has been demonstrably proven now that he isn’t a self-made anything. He ran for president … and then won!

He has been lying to us daily ever since he took the oath of office.

Here is now faced with the most serious crisis of his tenure as president. I want to believe him when he said he ordered the air strike against the Iranian terrorist/general because of “imminent attack” threats against the United States.

However, I cannot believe him. I cannot accept anything he says about, well, anything.

I have lost count of the lies he has told. The Washington Post has been keeping a running tab on the lies; the paper’s count has exceeded 15,000 whoppers since his inauguration. His lying is accelerating. He is telling more lies daily now than at any time since he became president.

How in name of truth-telling can Americans of any stripe — even those who count themselves as Trump supporters — believe a word that comes from this guy? They can’t. Yet many of them still do. Are they liars, too? I won’t buy into that notion. I only am left to presume that they have been snookered by this guy, who spent his entire adult life searching only to enrich himself. There isn’t a single moment of public service in his pre-political background.

My cynicism is raging at this moment as I watch the president of the United States continue to lie his way through this crisis, through the impeachment file by the House of Representatives and as the Senate prepares to put this individual on trial.

I truly don’t like feeling this way. Donald Trump won’t allow my cynicism to go away.